Hymn in honour of *Caecilia (virgin and martyr of Rome, S00146) composed in Latin in Hispania, possibly in the 7th c.
E04596
Literary - Poems
Liturgical texts - Hymns
Hymnodia Hispanica, Hymn 98
IN SANCTAE CAECILIAE
The hymn for the feast of the virgin Caecilia in the first nine strophes. The following nine strophes tell of her sanctity and piety, her ascetic and devotional practices, and her vow of chastity. Despite the vow, she is forced to marry. The marriage, however, is not consummated because Caecilia's husband has a vision of an angel crowning Caecilia with roses and lilies. The husband is won for the faith, he also converts his brother and they are both martyred. Caecilia later is tortured by fire, and dies after being struck three times by the sword. She is taken to Heaven.
(10) Inde nobis, sacra uirgo, mitte celi munera,
liliorum uel rosarum munus inde proroga,
30 unde ausisti superna ueritatis gaudia.
(11) Liliis corusca in nos castitas prefulgeat,
Punicis rosis uoluntas passionis ferbeat,
criminum mole subacto innobemur gratia.
(12) Ecce aduentum futuri prestolamur iudicis,
35 sustinemus et beata illa lucis gaudia;
non rei tunc puniamur, non crememur ignibus,
(13) Martyrum sed sacrosanctis adgregati cetibus
euadamus, quod timemus, contuentes gloriam
regis almi, ad coronam euocati dexteram,
(14) 40 Vt tuam, Xriste, uidentes seruuli presentiam
gratulemur, gaudeamus, personemus gloriam,
curie celestis arce confobendi in secula.
'(10) From there [i.e. Heaven], o holy virgin, send us Heaven's gifts. From this place in which you have drunk in the superior joys of truth, offer us the gift of roses and lilies.
(11) Let us be brightly chaste just as lilies are, let our will to suffer be of the radiant red of roses. Having overcome the burden of our sins we are renewed by grace.
(12) We expect the coming of the future judge, and we wait for the blessed joys of the light. Let us not be then punished as the guilty ones, and let us not be burned in fires,
(13) But let us, joined with most the holy crowd of martyrs, flee from what we are afraid of looking at the glory of the mild King, called at his right side for a crown,
(14) So that we, Your servants O Christ, who are to be nourished for ever in the fortress of the heavenly court, seeing Your presence may rejoice, exult, and sing Your glory.'
Text: Castro Sánchez 2010, 365-368.
Translation and summary: M. Szada.
Chant and religious singing
Service for the saint
FestivalsSaint’s feast
Non Liturgical ActivityComposing and translating saint-related texts
Prayer/supplication/invocation
Source
The hymn in honour of Caecilia is written in trochaic tetrameter. It is closely related to the mass in honour to saint Caecilia from the Mozarabic Sacramentary (Férotin 1912, 25-29). The feast of saint Caecilia was present in the Old Hispanic liturgical calendar already in the 7th century, as a prayer for the feast can be found in the Orationale Visigothicum (the manuscript is from the end of the 7th or the beginning of the 8th century, E05086). On these grounds, Pérez de Urbel (1926, 115) dated this hymn to the 7th century. He also opted for the early date of composition on stylistic grounds. See also Castro Sánchez 2010: 824.Three manuscripts preserve the whole text of the hymn: Psalmi Cantica et Hymni, Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional, ms. 10001 (9th/11th c.); Emilianensis, Madrid, Biblioteca de la Real Academia de la Historia 30 (10th c.); and Psalmi Cantica et Hymni, London, British Library 30851 (from the 11th c.).
Pérez de Urbel’s method of dating hymns:
The method is based on two preliminary assumptions:
a) that the bulk of the Hispanic liturgy was composed in the 7th century, the ‘golden age’ of the Hispanic church, and that important intellectual figures of this period (Braulio of Zaragoza, Isidore of Seville, Eugenius of Toledo, and others) participated in its creation;
b) that the liturgy was, nevertheless, still developing and changing in the period after the Arab invasion, and therefore, many texts which we find in 9th, 10th, and 11th c. liturgical manuscripts might be of more recent date. Some hymns can be dated with some confidence to the period after 711, for instance if they mention ‘hagaric oppression’ or if they are in honour of saints whose cult appears to have been imported into Hispania after the 7th century (since they do not feature in earlier literary and epigraphic evidence, nor are attested in the oldest liturgical book from Hispania, the Orationale Visigothicum).
It is more difficult to identify the hymns which are certainly from before 711. Pérez de Urbel, firstly and reasonably, attributed to this group hymns with what appear to be reliable attributions to authors from the 7th century (like Braulio of Zaragoza or Quiricius of Barcelona), and those which are stylistically close to the poetry of Eugenius of Toledo from the 7th century.
Pérez de Urbel then compared the two groups of hymns – those probably earlier than 711, and those probably later – and noticed the following:
a) late hymns contain barbarisms and solecisms, while early ones are written in correct Latin;
b) late hymns are composed in rhythmic metres, while early ones are in correct classical quantitative metres; authors of the 8th and 9th century who attempted to write in quantitative metres always made mistakes; also from the 8th century onwards we have no more poetic inscriptions in quantitative metres;
c) some rhythmical poetry could nevertheless be early;
d) although both early and late hymns sometimes have rhymes, perfect rhymes occur only in late hymns.
In the absence of any certain indications for dating, Pérez de Urbel assumed that a hymn is early if at least two requirements were met: the Latin is ‘correct’ and there are no perfect rhymes. He also considered early every hymn composed in a quantitative metre.
Discussion
The hymn, along with the mass in honour of Caecilia, is the earliest evidence of the cult of this Roman martyr in the Iberian Peninsula. The authors of these texts were almost certainly acquainted with the Martyrdom of Caecilia (see E02519) which is included in the Spanish Passionary (the manuscript is from the 9th century, Fábrega Grau 1953, 174-175), as they know the story of the angelic vision and the crowns of roses and lilies, and they also say that Caecilia died after being struck three times by the sword. Nevertheless, because the Spanish liturgical texts fail to mention the fourth companion of Caecilia, Maximus (who features in the Martyrdom), some scholars have argued that the Martyrdom was not known in the Iberian Peninsula before the 8th or even 9th century (Fábrega Grau 1953, 174-175; Castro Sánchez 2010, 824).According to the Old Hispanic liturgical books and calendars, the feast was celebrated during Advent. The mention of 'the coming of the future Judge' (in v. 34) is an allusion to this liturgical season.
Bibliography
Editions:Blume, C., Hymnodia Gothica. Die Mozarabischen Hymnen des alt-spanischen Ritus (Analecta Hymnica Medii Aevii 27; Leipzig: O.R. Reisland, 1897).
Castro Sánchez, J., Hymnodia hispanica (Corpus Christianorum Series Latina 167; Turnhout: Brepols, 2010).
Castro Sánchez, J., Hymnodia hispánica (Corpus Christianorum in Translation 19; Turnhout: Brepols, 2014). Spanish translation.
Further reading:
Fábrega Grau, Á., Pasionario hispánico (Madrid, Barcelona: Atenas A.G., 1953).
Férotin, M., Le Liber Mozarabicus sacramentorum et les manuscrits mozarabes (Paris: Firmin-Didot, 1912).
Pérez de Urbel, J., "Origen de los himnos mozárabes," Bulletin Hispanique 28 (1926), 5-21, 113-139, 209-245, 305-320.
Marta Szada
| ID | Name | Name in Source | Identity | S00146 | Caecilia, virgin and martyr of Rome | Caecilia | Certain |
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